Posted:6th Nov 2003I wanted to put a few ideas out there for people to play with. These aren't Jedi. They're not new. They're not 'my' moves. There's a whole load of variations that lead from and to them. And I don't want people to start discussing them too geekily. They're just ideas to give to people who might not have seen them yet. And they all look better if you smile too.

The Wheelchair - Same time isolations at your sides between your arm and your torso.This is just one member of a large family of moves (a family called 'poi moves'), but got a name because it was for too good a naming opportunity to miss! There's a whole load of other variations - split time, in front, internal to external, internal tuck-turns, etc... You figure them out.

Tap BacksSpin backwards at your side, slowly. As the poi head passes 45 degrees past horizontal on it's rise release the handle so that the head continues towards you. Quickly bring your hand up to impact with the poi head, sending it back whence it came. The handle will be somewhere, grab it and keep spinning. Can also be done the other way, with poi coming over your shoulder.

These stem from seeing club juggling tap backs, which I can't do. These seem to work with my sock poi - haven't tried other socks/tail/fire/goblin/whatever poi. Speed, point of release and possibility of it working at all are dependent on your poi.

Mid Chain GrabsStop powering the poi so that you can move your hand from the centre of rotation and grab hold of the chain near the poi head, spin a revolution, then let go into the original poi circle.

Isolated ThrowsSpin backwards. As the poi head reaches horizontal push the handle down. The poi will isolate and the handle will return to you.

CatchesDon't let jugglers have all the fun! Catch and throw your poi. There's two different ways to catch your poi:pull - If you stop your hand giving poi circular momentum a small hand movement can pull the poi back into your hand. This makes catches nice and easy in all positions, and allows some great exaggerations.fall - Just stop powering the poi and it'll fall. With practice it'll fall nicely into the palm of your had. This looks a bit smoother than a pull catch, but is a bit harder, especially when catching from behind.

Flatlining and FlicksGotta dig them cheesy names! Basically a pull catch which misses and so dissects the circle of poi movement and forms a semicircle. Bounce = flick from a Gilligan

Throws and dropsWhat else you going to do once you've caught it?

Bounce poiDon't let bounce jugglers have all the fun! Put big bouncy balls on a rope (or buy a suitable dog toy) and find a flat, hard floor. If you've even seen club bounce juggling you know what I mean.

Posted:23rd Mar 2004errm, thats the trouble. about 6 months of reading back though stuff *if* you know where to look. otherwise take a look at the terminology thread. and ignore the fish, thats peaple being 'clever'

Posted:29th Mar 2004my quicklinks kept coming unscrewed when hot so i've reverted back to split rings for now. pain in the bum cos they're poo, but my poi heads are very light at the moment and i don't spin to agressively so they last quite a while unless someone else (originalsmit) has a go...need to buy some more hardcore links nextime methinks!

It is our fantasies that make us real. Without our fantasies we're just a blank monkey' - Terry Pratchett

quicklinks do come unsrewed sometimes, I find its a good idea to cheack them with pliars every now and again, and if you have a lot of trouble (and dont change your heads much) use some of that stuff for repairing exausts and smear it on the thread before tightening.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus

Posted:2nd May 2010Haha mega ultra super 6 year bump.If you are truly looking for new funky stuff that is not so techy I've got quite a few things.Let's see I just have to look into my poi diary which must be somewhere around in my files...

Ok so these are some of the 'new' stuff I've been doing intermittently for a while, it actually reminded me of some things I though of months ago and still have to practice and integrate into flow.

-Twist your wrist(s) around your leg(s) while doing under the leg tricks. This is something I very rarely see in videos but I've been having a lot of fun and discovering a lot of very cool variations and combos with it. Also related, try doing utl thingies while in crosser position.

-I also have quite a bunch of stuff I've been practicing just spinning in floor plane aka ceiling plane aka horizontal plane. You think you know corkscrew and matrix? Well it's not hard to visualize that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Pretty much any trick you can think of in vertical planes can be adapted with a few body contortions, bends and jumps into floorplane mode. Just duck, bend backwards, cross your arms, jump over the chains and poi, lean to one side and do waistwrap, neck through-wrap, over your back with your hand between your legs, under your back, etc all can be done in floorplane in various combinations. It looks specially cool if you string some combos and just keep spinning horizontally for a while with your body moving A LOT to give way for the poi, kind of surreal and quite a task to get the planes always perfectly horizontal since you're fighting gravity all the time.

-Multiplane flowers (ok so this is techy and doesn't look that good at all anyways). Basically your arms spin in one plane while your poi spin in another, endless combinations, even atomic atomics etc.

-Behind head crosser, behind head archer weaves. So you have your arm(s) kind of contorting behind your neck.

-Other contortions with the full body crossers, so try from a 4bt waistwrap to get the poi that is not waistwrapped crossed across your chest and behind your back. Or get it utl instead which is halfway.

-Using pendulums down beside you, make your leg(s) imitate the motion of the poi pendulums so you get interesting visual effects depending on the timings you use. Please don't try doing BOTH legs at the same time for obvious reasons unless you're hanging by your teeth from a branch or something.

-Get down! Butt jump, like skipping rope but with your butt. Get dirty in the mud by rolling around with butterflies or 'corkscrews'. Buzzsaw tumble, or various utl tumbles; I suggest your practice on a mattress. Utl cartwheels, so you use only one hand for the cartwheel and the other hand does something funky at the same time.

By the way, I have done these things at some point so it can all be done. There's probably some more stuff that I've though of but haven't written down or have forever lost the napkin where I wrote it.

If there's enough people interested I might make a post with the actual techy stuff, but the bottom line is that there's no need to stop doing poi with all the enormous amount of things yet to practice and discover.